Up to this point in Their Eyes Were Watching God, Tea Cake seems like an unusually progressive man. Where Logan's main concern was his farm rather than Janie, and Jody's main concern was status, Tea Cake has always seemed to be very focused on Janie. As a result of these, Logan and Jody were both seen by Janie as restricting her, albeit in different ways, while Tea Cake has allowed her to do much as she pleases. But, for all his progressive stance before, when it comes down to Mrs. Turner's brother, Tea Cake makes a very unusual move. In order to prevent Mrs. Turner and her brother from getting it into their heads that Janie was theirs for the taking, he beats Janie. He doesn't yell at Mr. Turner, or even Mrs. Turner, he just hits his own wife. Where did that come from?
This isn't to say he did it with no reason. It's explained that Mr. Turner is useless, and Tea Cake probably doesn't wield enough influence over Mrs. Turner for that route. In fact, Janie can't even dissuade her, despite the oodles of power she gives Janie. But, at least in the present, beating one's wife over such a matter seems like such an overreaction, or if nothing else a misplacement of anger. Surely this could've been handled differently; at last resort, couldn't Janie and Tea Cake just go around saying he beat her? But, instead, the book is very clear about the realness of the act, saying, "Before the week was over he had whipped Janie. Not because her behavior justified his jealousy, but it relieved that awful fear inside him. Being able to whip her reassured him in possession" (147). For a man with reasonably progressive ideas at the time (letting Janie play checkers and engage in the porch-talk, for example), the fact that he refers to his marriage to Janie as a "possession" severely relegates her role in the relationship. It seems to almost take the wind out of the sails of feminism that Janie had been riding before. Sure, she made the decision for this man who started off very kind to her, but he still ended up similar to Jody in different ways. She's still something that he has control over in his mind, and the fact that Janie doesn't seem to react to this sets off alarm bells in my head. But, perhaps, I am misreading this passage...
Monday, October 22, 2012
Mother South and Her Many Children
The South is not easily separable from its past. It is well known for its many racist procedures, from slavery to Jim Crow. Yet, despite its very present past (or, in this case, present), three very different characters with very different ideas about it have come up in our books so far. In Native Son, it is revealed that Bigger actually hails from the South. However, this fact actually doesn't come into play very much. And for such a naturalist book, this seems a bit out of place (Shouldn't his birthplace have had some effect on his development?), but it's non-importance seems to signal a specific stance that Wright takes: the subtle northern racism had just as much, if not more effect on Bigger's personality. Certainly, this is a strange statement, considering that Bigger's childhood years seem to be given the short end of the stick when they have a much larger and longer-lasting influence on his life. Despite this, Wright seems to merely shrug its impact off, and moves on to what he cares about more.
Invisible Man is a little different. It spends a lot more time looking at the South, and it certainly gives it a much larger impression on the narrator, but something still appears off about it. The truth is, the narrator seems to be an outlier for the South, one of very few people who actually get the game. And, once he understands what is going on, he's already in Harlem, nightmares of Dr. Bledsoe and his grandfather long gone. So, in exchange for giving the South more importance, the book shortchanges the black people that live there somewhat, making them not much better off than those from Native Son.
But, after these two books that place a heavy emphasis on the North, we get Their Eyes Were Watching God. Here, we get a rich variety of characters all from the South, and it becomes greater than a simple birthing place for revolutionaries. So, what's wrong with this display of black culture? The problem, at least to those like Wright, is that the past for them is something to be forgotten just as it is for the South today. The South and its people, at least in Hurston's book, show off something that Wright would just as soon leave behind. And Hurston didn't cheat the people in her story; they aren't characters from some minstrel show but real people depicted living the way they live. And while it's understandable to be ashamed of one's past, sometimes its just better to let the bad feelings go, and others will reciprocate.
Invisible Man is a little different. It spends a lot more time looking at the South, and it certainly gives it a much larger impression on the narrator, but something still appears off about it. The truth is, the narrator seems to be an outlier for the South, one of very few people who actually get the game. And, once he understands what is going on, he's already in Harlem, nightmares of Dr. Bledsoe and his grandfather long gone. So, in exchange for giving the South more importance, the book shortchanges the black people that live there somewhat, making them not much better off than those from Native Son.
But, after these two books that place a heavy emphasis on the North, we get Their Eyes Were Watching God. Here, we get a rich variety of characters all from the South, and it becomes greater than a simple birthing place for revolutionaries. So, what's wrong with this display of black culture? The problem, at least to those like Wright, is that the past for them is something to be forgotten just as it is for the South today. The South and its people, at least in Hurston's book, show off something that Wright would just as soon leave behind. And Hurston didn't cheat the people in her story; they aren't characters from some minstrel show but real people depicted living the way they live. And while it's understandable to be ashamed of one's past, sometimes its just better to let the bad feelings go, and others will reciprocate.
Of the Study of Invisibility and Odd Titles
Do you know the name of your garbageman? Or how about the condition of your waiter's love life? In all truth, you probably don't; to you they're just some person who goes about their life without any strong reference to yours. And while some people claim society or technology is to blame for this ("Back in my day I knew everybody in town! You young'uns need to get your face out of your phone and talk to people!"), the truth is far more sinister. Enter the dubiously-titled "Monkeysphere." Also known more scientifically as Dunbar's number, this concept refers to the number of other people a person can maintain stable relationships with. And since it all started with some harmless monkey fun, why don't we start with a monkey illustration?
Say you have a pet monkey. His name is not important, but the basic idea is that you have a good knowledge of your monkey friend. You and he might play together, fight evil together, it's not too important. You'd miss him if he died. But now, you have five monkeys. A little bit tougher, but with some practice you can distinguish each monkey by their little monkey ways. How about one hundred? It gets tougher. But, the point is still the same, more monkeys equals more problems. Eventually, you get to a point where there's simply too many monkeys to handle, and they become a wave of hair and flesh. But instead of being some lofty philosophical ideal, we've discovered experimentally at what point double the monkey is not double the fun. It varies from researcher to researcher, but it is thought to lie between one hundred and two hundred thirty (one hundred fifty being the commonly used value).
"So, what does this matter? I don't have any monkeys," you say. The problem is, it doesn't just apply to our little friends. That number corresponds to how many humans the typical person can know well and continue to know well without having a breakdown. And it all ties back into the invisibility of Ellison's Invisible Man (and, to a degree, how Bigger thinks about white people in Native Son). The entire point of the narrator's invisibility in Invisible Man is that others don't truly know him, but assume something about him and go with it. In fact, that's what happens to those who fall outside your Monkeysphere. While you may know those within it like the back of your hand, if they fall outside, your brain just assumes something to fill in the void of information you have about them, and no harm is made (on you). Similarly, how different is Bigger's "white mountain" view of the white people around him too different from the earlier illustration of a wave of monkeys? To Bigger, there's so many of them, and they're all so foreign from him, that he just has to assume that they constitute one grand force against him. It takes someone to break the mold (Max) before he realizes what he's done. And so, in an odd sort of way, both writers wrote to an obscure neuroscientific principal that underlies the very principles of our society.
Say you have a pet monkey. His name is not important, but the basic idea is that you have a good knowledge of your monkey friend. You and he might play together, fight evil together, it's not too important. You'd miss him if he died. But now, you have five monkeys. A little bit tougher, but with some practice you can distinguish each monkey by their little monkey ways. How about one hundred? It gets tougher. But, the point is still the same, more monkeys equals more problems. Eventually, you get to a point where there's simply too many monkeys to handle, and they become a wave of hair and flesh. But instead of being some lofty philosophical ideal, we've discovered experimentally at what point double the monkey is not double the fun. It varies from researcher to researcher, but it is thought to lie between one hundred and two hundred thirty (one hundred fifty being the commonly used value).
"So, what does this matter? I don't have any monkeys," you say. The problem is, it doesn't just apply to our little friends. That number corresponds to how many humans the typical person can know well and continue to know well without having a breakdown. And it all ties back into the invisibility of Ellison's Invisible Man (and, to a degree, how Bigger thinks about white people in Native Son). The entire point of the narrator's invisibility in Invisible Man is that others don't truly know him, but assume something about him and go with it. In fact, that's what happens to those who fall outside your Monkeysphere. While you may know those within it like the back of your hand, if they fall outside, your brain just assumes something to fill in the void of information you have about them, and no harm is made (on you). Similarly, how different is Bigger's "white mountain" view of the white people around him too different from the earlier illustration of a wave of monkeys? To Bigger, there's so many of them, and they're all so foreign from him, that he just has to assume that they constitute one grand force against him. It takes someone to break the mold (Max) before he realizes what he's done. And so, in an odd sort of way, both writers wrote to an obscure neuroscientific principal that underlies the very principles of our society.
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